Israel: Traveling Trepidation

A retired Israeli general's brush with British police last month has set off a fright in Israel. Doron Almog, who commanded the Gaza Strip and southern Israel from 2000 to 2003, flew to London Sept. 11 for a fund-raiser. British police, however, were waiting to arrest him at Heathrow airport for alleged war crimes. When word of the pending arrest leaked to Israeli diplomats, they radioed the pilots to prevent Almog from disembarking. He spent the layover on the plane and flew straight back to Israel. Now officials there worry hundreds of officers will be liable for arrest in European states that embrace "international jurisdiction," which allows nations to prosecute other nations' alleged war criminals. "Israel has a working justice system," says Irit Kohn, who headed the Justice Ministry's international division until recently. But Daniel Machover, the British lawyer who obtained the arrest warrant for Almog's part in the razing of 59 Palestinian homes in Gaza in 2001, says Israel has mostly refrained from prosecuting servicemen suspected of abuses. Almog says the demolitions were a military necessity--but they don't make him a war criminal.

© 2005